Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

There is nothing that justifies having to dispatch our cricket teams to Canada to play each other

There were reports in newspapers the other day about a 'heavy exchange of fire' between Indian and Pakistani troops across something known as the Siachen glacier in Kashmir. I don't know about Pakistan, but India has been making noises for some time about this glacier, specifically the shooting that goes on across it. This is the world's highest battlefield, at some significant thousands of feet. We want to be recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records for setting a world record in the height above sea level at which battles are conducted.

Now I cannot see what's so remarkable about shooting across a vast quantity of ice that it needs to be in the Guinness Book.Then again, I couldn't see what was so remarkable about owning the world's longest fingernails either -- and an Indian made it into the Guinness Book for just that a few years ago. It's another matter that he has now decided to clip and sell them; if you have $10,000 to spare, which is what he wants for them, those fingernails might just be the centrepiece for your coffee-table you have always dreamed of.

But to return to that glacier. The evening I sat down to write this, Siachen came to mind, and for a curious reason. The first so-called 'Friendship' cricket match between India and Pakistan, to be played in Toronto on September 14, was called off because of torrential rain. Think of it: in our part of the world, our two countries are shooting at each other over an expanse of frozen water. Given that, it's almost as if there's some odd justice in the fact that on the other side of the globe, a deluge of water, decidedly non-frozen, has come in the way of 'Friendship'.

The irony begins with the very venue of these matches: Toronto. We have some of the world's most talented cricketers here on the subcontinent: men like India's Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble, or Pakistan's Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Mushtaq Ahmed, would make most people's all-world cricket teams. The sad thing is that for the two nations's teams to play a match, they must travel halfway around the planet. For us fans to see these wizards of bat and ball matching their talents against each other, we have to switch on our televisions in the middle of the night.

Again, I don't know about Pakistan, but here in India there are politicians who harangue us into believing that Pakistan should not come here to play. They are our enemies, so why should we tolerate their team on our soil?

Bal Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sena here in Bombay, is the loudest proponent of this particular piece of vile logic. So successful is he that columnists and millions of others are thinking the same thing. And that makes me think to myself sadly: Wasim Akram, possibly the world's finest bowler, is getting on in years. I don't know if I will ever get to see him myself, here in India, bowling to Sachin Tendulkar.

The last time Pakistan was supposed to play in Bombay was in October 1991. Late one night, thugs from the Shiv Sena stole onto the ground where the match was to be played, dug holes in it, poured oil into the holes and ran. They were hailed by their boss for this heroic action: for him, it seemed to rank up there with famous acts of defiance from our freedom struggle against the British. In any case, that was the end of that match. That was also the end of the entire series of matches planned for that month.

Actually, the two teams did square off recently: in India, earlier this year. That match was in Bangalore, the quarter-final of the cricket World Cup. When Pakistan lost, goons in that country threw stones at the players's homes and made death threats against them. One was civilised enough to forego such Neanderthal reactions: He only approached the courts with a case pleading for the captain to be imprisoned for losing to India.

This is the stuff cricket on the subcontinent is made of. Toronto, here we come! Except for the rain.

Back to the Siachen glacier still again. The nightly news carried a segment on troops in Siachen some months ago. They had their big guns pointed up at a steep angle. They were wrapped in layers of clothing but were still shivering, as was the reporter. Behind them, the screen was a perfect white from the ghostly terrain of the glacier. The soldiers shoved shells into the guns and fired them, over and over again. I couldn't see who or what they were firing at, or even why. I doubt the troops could either.

I was speechless with the sheer futility of it all. Why had we put these men in this place where no man belongs? For what were they putting their lives on the line, a line they cannot even see in the snow and ice? What on earth were they firing at? There must be something at stake in Siachen, something that makes all the shooting necessary. But I'm damned if I know what that something is.

More and more, that seems to sum up the hostility between India and Pakistan. There is simply nothing between our countries that justifies the huge sums of money we spend on waging war, nothing that justifies the steady loss of young lives to idiotic shooting. Nothing, too, that justifies having to dispatch our cricket teams to Canada to play each other.

Now I don't mean to imply that there are not thorny issues between us. I don't mean to gloss over the real resentment that a lot of people on both sides of the border feel. What I do mean to say is that there is nothing we are doing to resolve these issues. If we point at Pakistan for fueling terrorism in Kashmir, or bellow that Pakistan is holding land that belongs to us there, Pakistan yells back that we are the occupying power in Kashmir, that we have never let Kashmiris decide their own future. If we think Pakistan is acquiring arms far in excess of its needs, Pakistan thinks precisely the same of us.

On both sides, we listen avidly to leaders who think nothing of ratcheting up the hostility and hatred: after all, neither they nor anyone in their families have been or are likely to be dumped on the world's highest battleground to shoot and die. The Thackerays and their kind thrive on keeping us ready to swipe at Pakistan. Dialogue, discussion, negotiation, even playing cricket -- these are forgotten words today. Worse, they are even unpatriotic: Pakistan is our enemy, right?

And there we remain, each country rooted in the glutinous resin of its own position, each blaming the other for being intransigent. There we remain, nations that prefer to shoot at each other rather than feed, clothe and educate their people. Perverse, rogue countries in the eyes of the rest of the world.

So it's rather fitting that we hanker after an entry in the Guinness Book for the perverse inanity of fighting higher than man has anywhere else.

After beating Pakistan in Bangalore, after crowing over the reaction of the fans in Pakistan, India lost in the semifinal of the cricket World Cup to the eventual champions, Sri Lanka. That match, in Calcutta, had to be abandoned. The crowd, upset that India was losing, set fire to the stands, threw garbage on the field and rioted.

There's no word yet on who's applying to the Guinness Book of World Records for a world record in cricket fan stupidity, India or Pakistan. I suspect it will be a dead heat.